Friday, February 12, 2016

Socialism usually starts with talk of “fairness,” but it generally ends in tyranny and poverty. As Alan Kors wrote back in 2003: “No cause, ever, in the history of all mankind, has produced more cold-blooded tyrants, more slaughtered innocents, and more orphans than socialism with power. It surpassed, exponentially, all other systems of production in turning out the dead. The bodies are all around us.

The piece also discusses socialism as it's instantiated in northern Europe and Venezuela. I agree with the article that it's not fair to call Scandinavia "socialist" as if that were the whole truth of the matter: the reason those countries are so prosperous is that they are, in large part, market economies. This makes them a bit like China, if anything: politically speaking, they may toe some sort of leftist line, but economically speaking, they know what actually works to maximize eudaimonia. Because they aren't stupid the way Hugo Chavez was.

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